


an Gorta Mor

by Ashtoreth



Series: The Bhean Sidhe of Craglea [1]
Category: Irish Mythology, White Wolf, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashtoreth/pseuds/Ashtoreth





	an Gorta Mor

The full moon rose further into the sky as if seeking to outpace the grey skeletal fingers of the clouds that were threatening to engulf its thin, cold light. A similar drama was unfolding below on the Boireann as thin tendrils of mist snaked along through the grikes of the ground. Lush and sweet late autumn grasses withered as the cold mist leached the life and warmth from them where the bare, pale feet of the faery woman trod. Even the Púca would be hard pressed to find anything to harvest in her wake and the thought gave her a cruel thrill as she danced along the tops of the bare clints. As pleasing as the thought was, it was not enough to sustain her glee and the fine black lace spun from spider's silk fell slowly back around the faery woman's feet.

Aoibheann stood on Slieve Elva and looked around her domain with an air of discontent. Centuries upon centuries she had made this land her home; where there were no trees to hang a man, nor enough water to drown him, and, as the people here spoke in black humour, if you finally succeeded in killing him, it was too rocky to bury him. The character of the land and its people had fed her glamouries richly over the decades... until the ravages of _an Gorta Mor_ had finally passed. Oh, there was fear enough still to slack her thirst and desperation to feed her hunger, but it was a thin gruel that never quite satisfied her. Something of the land's hardiness was drained from the people; too long they had lived with Death and Hardship as their companions and now they were no longer fearful of their presence. Their resignation rippled out and affected the faery woman, for Aoibheann was tending her glamouries far longer and more intensely than she had a liking for.

Despite this, she knew as she looked down upon the rare lights stealing out from shuttered windows, that her answers could be found in the dreams of the sleeping people. Guarded hopes were fed each time a letter arrived from the west describing a land not unlike the Isles of the Blest where the streets, if not paved with gold, were paved with opportunity and ever-present hunger was unheard of even for the meanest of families.

With a smile as cruel as the first frost of winter upon a rose, Aoibheann drew up the powers of nightmare and winter to wrap herself in a great cloak of cold dread. The moonlight around her went dim as it bent away from the bhean sidhe while the chill of the night air and the shadows from the deeper grikes wove around her and made her presence even more keenly felt in this realm. Tonight she would not seek to take her strength from the fools who thought that cold iron was enough to keep her at bay; they had a respect for the old ways that Aoibheann, at rare times, appreciated. No, tonight she would feast on the terror of those outland fools who dismissed her and her kind as mere superstition dreamt up by ignorant peasants.

And she would twist and bend them to open the gateway of new promise in this weary land.


End file.
